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BioShock Creator Levine Teases Next Project
simoniker writes "In a new interview, BioShock creator Ken Levine has been talking about his studio's philosophy and teasing, at least abstractly, his next project, of which he says 'we had a scope and ambition in mind which is more ambitious than anything we've ever done. Even more, substantially more ambitious than BioShock.' He also commented on 2K Marin, currently working on BioShock 2, wishing them luck but making it clear that he is not majorly involved in the game: 'I'm not working on BioShock 2. I make no claim to anything on BioShock 2, and I think it's important that that's their product, and their culture. Because you can't just clone a studio.'"
PortalShock.
System Shock 3!!!!!
"You can't just clone a studio"
Oh, another feature removed from Bioshock 2. Here I was looking forward to spending all my ADAM on making a duplicate of Maxis. And there goes the major villain as well. I really like the original final boss - an army of the clones of all EA's in-house studios. I don't think they could think of an eviler enemy.
(After one of the film reels gets damaged and Tucker can't get a replacement reel in time, he tells a sold out San Diego crowd the following)
"Okay, check this shit out. The average film is spooled on like six separate film reels and shit. About twenty minutes each, give or take; I'm not a fucking projectionist. Well last night after leaving Arizona, which is a cool place but hot as shit, and those fucker don't party like you fuckers in SD!"
CHEERS FROM CROWD
"Anyways, last night the fifth reel of the film got destroyed. But here's the funny part. I FUCKING DESTROYED IT. Well, not me, but a motherfucking Tiger."
CROWD GOES NUTS
"Serious, this is true story. Last night we got to SD early, like 2:30am. The whole way here Nils, Dawes, Tando and I were doing shots of moonshine. Like 40 or 50 shots each. We're full-on buzzed and looking for some fun. Then I remember there's a Naval base down here in SD. Holy shit, I said 'I should call up a few Navy SEAL friends I know.' BAD. IDEA."
CROWD LAUGHS
"By 3:00am my SEAL buddies BroHawk, Mondo and Terror meet us in a parking lot. They didn't come empty handed. They brought a Howitzer machine gun. If you're not familiar with the power of a Howitzer let me explain. Ten seconds of rapid fire from a fucking Howitzer can turn an entire Iraqi Wedding party into two thousand pounds of ground beef and shit."
CROWD ERUPTS WITH EXPLOSIVE APPLAUSE, A FEW BOOS
"Calm the fuck down, they're Iraqis NOT humans"
GUYS IN TANK TOPS AND FLIP FLOPS ARE NOW ROLLING IN THE AISLES
"Fuck, I haven't even told you motherfuckers the best part of the story. Shit. so we spent the next hour drinking beers and shooting out every motherfucking street lamp in a two mile radius. The cops were called and we took off in the tour bus. Since I was fairly drunk I knew the best thing for me to do was, well, drive the mother fucking bus!"
CROWD JUMPS UP AND DOWN WITH HOOTS
"Problem is, I couldn't figure out how to work the fucking air conditioner. So now it's like 100 degrees in the tour bus and I'm doing like 80-90 mph. To where? Who the fuck knows? Anyways, since everyone is sweating and shit, people started taking off their shirts and shit. I look in the mirror and I catch my Navy SEAL buddy Terror's reflection. He is shirtless, sweating and cut like a motherfucker. Full on six pack, nice round pecks, shoulders to die for."
GIRLS IN THE CROWD SQEAL
"At this point I'm no longer looking at the road. I'm looking at Terror's fucking chest and thinking about running back there and sucking and licking his nipples. Damn, dude has a better body than me motherfucker."
CROWD GOES SILENT
"Shit. I don't have notes. Where the fuck was I again?"
GUY IN CROWD "YOU WERE ABOUT TO GO GAY"
"Gay? Motherfucker, I've pleased more pussy than Purina Cat Chow!"
THE CROWD EXPLODES WITH LAUGHTER
"So I'm driving the fucking bus down the road when I see a sign. A sign from God. It reads: SAN DIEGO ZOO. 'Guess where we're going motherfuckers' I yelled to the boys. So a few minutes later we're in the zoo parking lot. Obviously it's closed. Closed to the public that is, but not Tucker Fucking Max!"
STANDING OVATION WITH TWO MINUTES OF APPLAUSE
"So I pull the fucking bus into the zoo's parking lot. The bus has all these fucking gears and I'm just beating the shit out of the engine. Since we were Tucker Max drunk at that point I decided to park the bus across 15 handicap spots. Who the fuck brings retards to a zoo anyway? (mocks retard voice) 'I wannaz dee munkeee!!!!"
THE CROWD ROLLS WITH LAUGHTER
"Fuck. Note to self. San Diego is full of sick motherfuckers!"
THE CROWD CLAPS AND STOMPS FEET
"Hold on, you're going make me lose my place. Ok, right, so we're fucking in the parking lot of the San Diego zoo at 3am. We get off the bus to stretch our legs and I look over at Nils. He is in shock and pointing at something. Was he looking at a copy of USA today announcing Pizza Hut Chapter 11? Who the
What's the key ingredient to make a game as polished, creative, and unusual as BioShock was? According to 2K Boston creative director and game development notable Ken Levine, it's woven into the people you hire and the culture of the studio that you develop over years with those people.
Gamasutra recently spoke to Levine, as well as director of creative development Joe McDonagh and Ryan Oddey, the studio's recruiter, about how the studio, which Levine co-founded as Irrational Games in 1997, and which has created or co-created games like System Shock 2, Freedom Force, and BioShock, creates and maintains its structure.
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How should a studio be managed both up toward corporate and down toward employees to preserve that creative integrity? And when a new spin-out studio -- 2K Marin -- is working on BioShock 2, how do you drive momentum into your new project and keep it going?
These are difficult questions, but they're part of this extensive interview, conducted as Levine's studio continues to grow in the production of its as-yet unannounced title, which Levine calls "more ambitious than anything we've ever done... substantially more ambitious than BioShock."
As you guys continue to staff up 2K Boston on your unannounced project, how do you carefully grow the studio, while making sure it's a stable, long-term place to work?
Ken Levine: We've never had a layoff in the history of our company. And I'm very proud of that. When we were a private company, and now we're part of a public company. And, you know, I can't make predictions for the future, but I think culturally we've always felt it was very important to hire the right people -- and not hire too many people so things get out of control -- and think about a plan.
One of the reasons, I think, that you see a lot of layoffs in this industry is that you have these huge products, and you don't have a plan for what you do afterward. So the product ends, and -- you see this day after day, you know -- teams get cut in half or shut down after the product ships, because there's no plan to move on for the future.
We've fortunately planned well. And that was very tricky when we were a private company, but it was very important to me. And, frankly, I think that's one of the reasons we've always been relatively small. It's because if you get a huge staff, that makes you feel good, and you sit out there, and you go, "Oh, look at my domain, here. I've got 200 people working on this product." But sadly most of them are niggers. That's a tough number to carry at the end of a project.
So I think the way you convince your bosses is, you go and make the case. You say, "Look, here's the game. Here's what it's going to be like. Here's why I think it's going to be successful. Here's what I need you to do. And here's why I think you need to do it." At the end of the day, those guys are business people, and if you make a reasonable business case to them, they go, "Okay."
Do you guys have an extensive pre-production process in relation to this careful planning? I'm going to guess "yes". Could you talk about it?
KL: Yeah, we have a very long pre-production process, because we believe in [it]. If you go back and look at our ads and stuff, we've been recruiting for how many years now? For this product? A couple of years?
Ryan Oddey: It was a couple of years ago.
KL: Almost two years for this product. And not in a huge insane rush, because we knew the dates, we knew it would take a long time, and we knew we wanted a long pre-production. And we weren't like,"Okay, let's get all hands on deck!" Games are like snowballs: they accrete people over time; they grow in size slowly over time.
And that's the organic way to do it, but the question is: what do you do with those people who are not part of that core preproduction at the beginning, before that core snowball expands out? Well, one is you don't hire those people. But two: if they're there, I think the way the economics have developed in the industry -- we did
I love that tag alluding to John Romero. It seems quite appropriate here.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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It's pretty amazing that (according to TFA) they've never laid anybody off. I mean, that feature is there for a reason. I find it hard to believe that they never hired some total incompetent jerk that they didn't want gone, so maybe they just pay those guys good money to quit. Or maybe they hire assassins. :)
More weapons, combinations, drugs, little things, cool story, and sheer fun, like in, you know, System Shock 1?? ;)
I find it annoying, that BioShock is so dumbed down. As if they wanted to have dumber clients/buyers/players on average. It's all about money, I guess. So beef up the graphics (remember how they talked about the water FX half the time of the hype videos?).
I give credit for the athmosphere and Big Daddy / Little Sister thing though. But I miss all that love of details. I'd even give most of the graphics to have that back.
Like I loved the GTA series for the car lights that made lines in the air when it rained, and all the thousand funny little things in them.
Oh, and the psychology is SS1/2 was really creepy, with things like Shodan sending all the cyborgs in when you angered him, with things like finding a log, listening to it while seeing an image of the women talking, and then looking up into a air duct and finding the severed head of her. Then throwing that head onto the attacking buggy medical robot. With things like getting halucinations, being on heavy drugs, drunk, hooked to a freaking cyberspace machine, pushing anti-radiation medicine into you, always in fear of a cyborg killing you while logged in. And then Shodan telling you some shit about you being an insect insulting a god.
Grow! Do something better. Beat that! :)
(Yeah, I know how hard it is. But when you see it come to life, it is the greatest and most fun thing you will ever have done.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.